


the salt air

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Canon Divergent For Aftermath Trilogy, Character Study, Introspection, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Pre-Empire's End, Storms, Teasing, emotional tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10072574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Luke shifts, making Lando far, far too aware of just how close they are to one another as he twists, his arm bumping against Lando’s. His eyes are serious when he looks at Lando, putting Lando on the spot in a way that also manages to knock him off-balance. In any one else, Lando would call it interest, but this is Luke, who hides such things even when he feels them.And Lando knows he feels them. He wouldn’t do half the things he does if he didn’t love, didn’t care, didn’t find all those little connections people have with one another and build them up in himself, too. He just hides it better than most. A Jedi thing, maybe. Lando doesn’t think it’s aLukething.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “West Coast” by Hey Marseilles.

Rain patters against the transparisteel window, the skies overhead shading toward dark purple, clouds pregnant with the burden of natural potential. As Lando leans against the sill, he peers down the length of the beach—empty now, save for an adventurous couple or two—and lets his gaze settle on the roiling, gray waves. They churn and spit foam and splatter against the waterlogged sand, frothing all the harder as a brisk wind batters at them from the opposite direction.

It’s not, Lando decides, tapping rhythmically at the wall, the ideal weather for the occasion. Not that this is an _occasion_ exactly. But it’s—Lando had wanted to do something nice. For Luke. On a planet known for its pleasant climes and relaxing atmosphere.

That is to say he might have finagled it so both he and Luke got assigned to this mission.

One last sacrifice for the nascent New Republic before Lando returns to Bespin to pick up the pieces the Empire had left behind; and maybe Luke’s thinking something similar. Lando knows he’s itching to get out of the public eye, get to scouring the galaxy for Jedi artifacts instead of playing at being the Republic’s own Jedi hero. Might as well go out on an easy note. That had been Lando’s reasoning. And Leia had agreed, eyes sparkling, words of support on her lips. _I think that’s a great idea,_ she’d said. _I’ll make it an order if I have to_.

She hadn’t had to, as it turns out, which came as something of a surprise to Lando. Not that it would have mattered really. Luke doesn’t let things like orders get in the way of him doing what he thinks is right. Apparently, right in this case means getting stuck with Lando in the middle of an unexpected storm—a storm that would, he’d learned from their contacts, last a fortnight or more, thus delaying negotiations enough that a new delegation would have to be sent in the future. Something about local customs and religious observances that would begin almost as soon as the storm abated. Nothing could be done until after those observances were completed.

_You’re welcome to stay, of course,_ their host had offered, gracious and dubious all at once. He’d worried at his lower lip, like he hadn’t been sure what to do with a cottage full of visitors who are experiencing his home in the strangest way imaginable to him. _For as long as you’d like_.

Frankly, Lando would just as soon chalk it up as an experience and head home. If he couldn’t do anything here, he had other things he needed to do.

No, that’s not quite right. He wants to relax on a beach. With sun and dry, warm sand and gently lapping water. And maybe he’d bring yet another planet into the New Republic’s folds—he’s gotten pretty good at that. Do this one last thing and do it right and enjoy himself a little at the same time. Maybe figure out what Luke would do under vacation-like conditions, because that’s the one thing he’s never seen before. Luke relaxing in a place that wasn’t Chandrila or _Home One_ or the _Falcon_. Sometimes, he isn’t sure he’s even seen that much. Luke has strange ideas about relaxation. Either way, Lando would learn something new about Luke. Win, win, wins all around.

“Are you going to brood all night?” Luke asks, his voice low and vaguely amused, intimate even from across the room. Lando hears him push himself to his feet, abandoning the cushy chair he’d commandeered some time ago, a pad in hand the whole while. He’d been quiet until now, working on Jedi business or New Republic business, Lando’s not sure and hadn’t thought to ask. Luke doesn’t much talk about his work these days.

“I don’t brood,” Lando answers, performing a precise heel turn. His hands tug at the hem of his shirt. What few wrinkles mar the cloth’s surface smooth out and disappear. Perfect.

“Not normally, no.” Luke inclines his head in slight acknowledgment and strides across the floor, a gleaming blond wood whorled with darker knots of color distributed unevenly across the planks. He reaches Lando’s side, close enough that the delicate scent of soap tickles at Lando’s senses, sweet and briny and somehow not unpleasant for that fact even though before this moment Lando might have considered the combination an affront to the senses. Close enough that Lando can hear each quiet inhalation Luke makes as he peers out of the window, too, head bent close to the cool, clear surface. He whistles and says, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.”

His fingertips whiten as he presses his fingers against the transparisteel and he closes his eyes, mouth parted. Were it not so slight, so ephemeral, Lando would call the curl of Luke’s lips a smile. But he’s seen what Luke looks like when he smiles. It’s not like this. And so Lando has no idea what to call it.

Before Lando can do anything—step away, avert his gaze, say something, any of the millions of options at his disposal because he’s Lando and he has a word for every occasion—Luke opens his eyes, his attention immediately flicking Lando’s way. It lingers, making Lando’s skin prickle and his stomach tighten, nerves jangling as lightning—lightning of all the damned things—splits the sky, its flash a welcome distraction as Luke cocks his head, thoughtful.

When thunder rumbles a handful of seconds later, Luke nods. “Tatooine’s not known for its thunderstorms,” Luke says, an offering. An explanation of sorts. He kicks lightly at the wall with just the very tip of his boot, a tic more than a fully realized action. It does no harm in any case and is barely audible over the rain pelting the outside of that selfsame wall.

“You’re enjoying yourself,” Lando says, willing to hazard the guess, no worse than making a wager on a sure bet. Warmth creeps through him at that realization, a comforting sort of pleasure that tickles at the back of his awareness. Some of it is pure pride at having succeeded and some of it is the pure rush of having succeeded despite the odds. He studies Luke’s profile and can’t help the smile that twitches across his lips, quickly smudged when Luke turns his attention Lando’s way.

“Is that so strange?”

Lando’s eyebrow slowly climbs on his forehead. “I’ve seen stranger out of you. I’ll give you that much.”

The corner of Luke’s mouth lifts. “You’re mocking me.” He furrows his brow, too, but despite the exaggerated suggestion of displeasure, the effect is minimal at best. Luke’s not mad. And his feelings haven’t been hurt.

So Lando teases him a little more. “I wouldn’t dare.”

Luke turns his face away, plucks at his chin with two fingers, scrubs at his arm, fidgeting in a way Lando’s not seen before—not since they’d first met anyway. When Luke had had good reason to be twitchy. Lando wonders what it means and wishes the back of Luke’s head was as easy to read as the front of it.

“You think this is something,” Lando says, more sincere, “you oughta see some of the atmospheric storms on Bespin.” He leans toward Luke, peers out the window from over Luke’s shoulder, traces a wide arc across the sky with his fingertip. “Imagine those—” he says of the clouds. “—except close enough you could almost walk through ’em. Flashes of lightning bright enough to dazzle you if you look too long. Not like these ones.” _They’re too dim_ , he thinks.

Luke shifts, making Lando far, far too aware of just how close they are to one another as he twists, his arm bumping against Lando’s. His eyes are serious when he looks at Lando, putting Lando on the spot in a way that also manages to knock him off-balance. In any one else, Lando would call it interest, but this is Luke, who hides such things even when he feels them.

And Lando knows he feels them. He wouldn’t do half the things he does if he didn’t love, didn’t care, didn’t find all those little connections people have with one another and build them up in himself, too. He just hides it better than most. A Jedi thing, maybe. Lando doesn’t think it’s a _Luke_ thing.

If heat suffuses Lando’s body, he doesn’t acknowledge it as such. And he doesn’t admit that maybe he’d like to be the one to hold Luke’s interest. He doesn’t let himself want a bridge across that distance Luke puts between himself and others, a tactic Lando can respect. It sure as hell makes Luke an asset in the field, an effective leader when not, and a hard man to bargain with in both circumstance. It’s admirable, the strength Luke has found in it.

Admirable. And frustrating.

Because Luke’s gaze lingers, pulling Lando apart and leaving him exposed while Lando can do little of the same in return. It’s uncanny just how much of himself Lando can see reflected in Luke’s eyes.

His attention drops to Luke’s lips.

“I’d like that,” Luke says, plain, a simple declarative statement of truth and it takes Lando a moment to realize they’re still talking about Bespin. There’s no reason Lando should feel…

He takes a step back, strategic retreat and all that, the need to step away scrabbling around his ribcage even as it squeezes at him in return. A voice in the back of his head berates him for cowardice. Another congratulates him for his prudence. A third, his own, tells both to shut it. “You’d be welcomed any time,” he says, the words gritty and hard to push out of his mouth. Why they turn to ash on his tongue, he can’t say. Maybe it’s because he knows Luke won’t take him up on the offer no matter how much he’d _like_ it. He has too much to do. They both do. And Luke is more responsible than any two people of Lando’s acquaintance except for Leia maybe.

Regardless, speaking turns out to be no more difficult an accomplishment, at least, than turning away altogether.

For whatever that’s worth.

_Not much_ , a small, greedy part of him suggests, the part that wants everything to be easy. The rest of him reminds him that he gets to keep his dignity somewhat no matter how easy or hard it is. Now that he knows he can do it, he should feel relief.

He’s not sure whether that’s a worthwhile trade or not. But it lets him walk away from this. And that’s the important thing.

“I think I’m gonna turn in,” Lando says, back now to the window and Luke, well aware that this is a delaying tactic at best and that he’s probably only succeeding in making Luke suspicious. “Enjoy the storm.”

“Okay, Lando. Sleep well,” Luke says, either taking Lando at face value or cutting him some slack. Lando makes it halfway across the room before he hears Luke’s voice again and the tone of it suggests something else, something that neither takes Lando at face value nor cuts him slack. “Wait.”

That one syllable stalls Lando in his tracks, gets his heart rattling against his rib cage and his skin prickling, too tight to contain the nerves lighting up inside of him. If Lando didn’t know better, he’d accuse Luke of using the Force on him. But Lando does know better and he knows this is all on him and he’d be feeling this way if Luke had no Force-sensitivity at all. Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, Lando says, “Yeah, Luke?”

He closes his eyes and he doesn’t turn to face Luke; he counts the seconds as they stretch out between them and he doesn’t allow himself to hope.

_When did you start letting yourself hope other people will make your overtures for you, Calrissian?_

_You shouldn’t even_ want _an overture anyway_.

“I was thinking…” When Lando finally turns, he sees Luke scrub his hand across his face and down around his neck. “I know Governor Adelhard’s blockade has been hard on Bespin and the rest of the Anoat sector—on you especially.” Straightening up a little more despite his already excellent posture, he nods, decisive. “And I know the chancellor claims she can’t help.”

Lando’s eyes scan the ground. He doesn’t like dwelling on that fact. Politics requires delicacy and sacrifice and compromise, he knows that, but somehow—somehow he’d thought he’d be able to leverage his own involvement in the Rebellion to get Bespin some help in rebuilding, in cleaning up.

But there are some things even Lando’s influence can’t crack.

This, it turns out, is one of them.

The fact that it’s the most important thing he could do—well, you can’t win them all, can you? He’d gone it alone before; he could do it again. He’d have Lobot and the other Anoat resistance fighters. But still…

“The Republic has a lot on its plate right now,” Lando says, neutral.

“That’s true.” Luke’s head tilts, conciliatory, thoughtful. His smile is twisted a little when it forms, just a hint too knowing. Yeah, Lando can’t blame him for that at least. It’s the way he feels half the time. “All the more reason someone should help, right? Someone like me.”

Shaking his head, Lando bites his lip. A man of Luke’s skills _would_ be helpful, Lando can’t lie about that. But… “Luke, it’s not your fight. You don’t have to…” He opens his palms, helpless, and shrugs. “It’s not even the Republic’s fight now.”

And that’s the worst damned part of it. It should be the Republic’s fight. It’s Lando’s fight, sure, but he’s all tangled up with the Republic now, has been since Vader gave him cause to make a stand. But ever since Palpatine’s defeat, Luke’s tried to take a step back—and for entirely understandable reasons. He’s done his part. His destiny isn’t so tied to the Republic’s as it had been to the Rebellion’s.

That doesn’t mean his destiny is tied to Lando’s now that they’re both veering away on their own courses.

But, oh, does Lando wish those courses aligned more closely.

And here Luke is offering just that.

“The Jedi are supposed to support and protect the people of the galaxy,” Luke says, philosophical. “The people of Anoat have suffered greatly for little gain. They’re as worthy of help as anyone else, right?”

_Yes,_ Lando wants to say, but the word stays locked in his heart. He knows too well that there are people suffering everywhere, that Luke’s presence could help any number of them just as much as he would help Lando’s people. “And some say the Jedi lacking impartiality is what got us into this mess to begin with. They might not be entirely wrong.” _Helping your buddy, Lando, isn’t impartial_. “There are places in the galaxy worse off than Anoat.”

Luke is needed everywhere and as selfish as Lando wants to be about it, he can’t bring himself to be.

“You’d rather I help them?” Luke asks.

“I’d rather you go where the Force guides you,” Lando answers, gruff, crossing his arms. Han might not believe in that stuff—or proclaim as much—but Lando’s always had enough reverence for luck to believe there’s a guiding, well, _force_ in the universe and that some people are more privy to in than others. Seeing Luke in action hasn’t hurt him in that regard. Lando also reveres things he can see with his own eyes. And Luke proves to Lando every day that the Force is a real thing.

“What if it guides me to you?” And though he speaks so innocently, so free of innuendo, Lando’s insides twist up all the same. He makes it sound so romantic, so much like it’s meant to be, him and Lando. Lando can only look at him, lost. He doesn’t have an answer for that. He’s never had one. He’d never thought he’d need one.

“Luke…”

And in response, Luke steps forward and presses his hand against Lando’s chest. Surely he can feel the pounding of Lando’s heart against his palm, but if he does, he doesn’t remark on it or the strength with which it beats. And Lando wants to ask what he’s doing, but he can’t bring himself to do that either, unwilling to break the fragility of the moment.

If he’s even allowed to call it that.

“Do you know what I see when I look at you?” Luke asks, words whisper delicate. He looks up at Lando through the thick fan of his eyelashes; Lando wouldn’t call it a mischievous glance, but it is something akin to that, a distant cousin of it maybe. Lando shakes his head and continues on with his explanation. “I see a man who won’t admit to needing anything from me. You might be the only person in the galaxy for whom that’s true, by the way. Some days, it feels like everyone wants something, but you’ve never so much as intimated the same.”

Lando doesn’t know where this is going, but he does recognize a field of mines when he sees one and he’d rather avoid getting blown to pieces by stepping in the wrong spot.

“I wish you would ask, Lando,” Luke continues, his hand sliding toward Lando’s neck. Leaning in, his eyes falling to Lando’s lips, he furrows his brow. “Or tell me if I’m mistaken.”

Lando’s throat bobs as he swallows and his tongue pokes out to wet the corner of his mouth. “You’re not,” he says, holding Luke by the shoulders, not inviting him any closer. _This isn’t like any declaration I’ve ever made_ , he thinks, wild. _Or received_. “You’re not mistaken, but…”

The obligation he has to Bespin and the obligation he wants to have to Luke conflate themselves in his mind. For a moment, they’re one and the same, neither in opposition with the other. It makes for a nice dream. His fingers tighten in the soft fabric of Luke’s shirt.

“Lando, I want to help. It’s the right thing to do.” He grabs Lando’s wrists and pries them away from his body. Clasping them between his palms, he smiles down at them, his thumbs brushing across Lando’s knuckles. “And I want you.” His smile widens and softens. “Why else do you think I agreed to this mission?”

“Because we’re pretty good at this diplomacy thing?” Lando says, getting a lovely laugh and a ducked head out of Luke for his trouble. It breaks the tension and gives Lando a moment to breathe even though Luke still won’t let go of his hands and that’s continuing to do a number on Lando.

_You used to be smoother than this,_ he thinks, wondering very much at the predicament. He can’t say he minds. Or he wouldn’t anyway if he knew what ‘I want you’ means here.

Or, no. He knows what it means. He just—doesn’t know what it _means._ For him. Or for Luke.

The thing is… the real, true hell of it is…

Luke’s got him if he wants him.

Stars’ sake, Luke’s had him all along. Ever since he’d dragged Luke’s sorry carcass through the _Falcon’s_ halls back on Bespin, he’s had him. And now he wants to come back. With Lando. Flush out what Imperial slime remains in his home, in so many of his people’s homes. 

“I thought you were going to play intrepid explorer,” Lando says. “Find Jedi artifacts. Discover lost Jedi truths.”

Luke tilts his head. “I’m not sure about becoming an intrepid explorer. And there’s still too much to do to dedicate all my time to ‘discovering lost Jedi truths.’ Whatever that means. One day, maybe.”

“I guess you’ll have to tell me when you find out, won’t you?”

“You could be there with me if you want to be.” The offer is genuine, freely given, with no expectations attached to it.

He’s tempted. He’s very tempted. Adventure lives in his blood as much as his taste for luxury, and the galaxy at large has always been his favorite playground. But… “I have responsibilities to Bespin.” If he was a younger man, a less experienced one, he may have taken Luke up on that offer. And though he’s certain his heart is caught in his throat, held in place by reluctant muscles determined to stop him from speaking foolish words, he says them anyway. “But if you ever need a home base, she’s yours.”

He doesn’t think Tatooine is Luke’s home any longer. Chandrila, maybe. That’s where Leia and Han are. It’s where they’ve all spent so much of their time the last year, too. It could’ve become home somewhere along the way. 

It’s as good a place to settle as any, Lando supposes. Not his first choice, but he can’t blame Luke if that’s where he wants to put down roots. _If_ he wants to put down roots.

“That’s a generous offer,” Luke says.

“I’m a generous guy,” Lando replies. It’s a poor attempt at a joke, barely funny, and doesn’t fool Luke for a second if the knowing glint in his eye is anything to go by.

And rather than give Lando grief about that, he says, “You are though,” instead, so sincere that Lando can’t help but tip Luke’s chin up and press a kiss against his—

Wait.

He tips Luke’s chin up and presses a kiss against his mouth and it feels so much like flying the _Falcon_ , throwing her into impossible loops and spins and swooping arcs that Lando’s stomach twists up, distracts him from what he’s doing enough that he gets stuck on—

On the fact that Luke is kissing him back and wrapping his arms around Lando’s neck. Luke’s lips are softer than he’d expected, but there’s just enough bite when he tugs at Lando’s own with his teeth to keep it interesting. Not that Luke’s not interesting anyway—that’s the problem, he’s always interesting—but… but this is better than he could have hoped, more than he might have let himself imagine.

If he’d known what it would be like, he might’ve made a move sooner. Because Luke is warm and alive in his arms, so responsive, pressed chest to thigh against Lando and trying for more if the way he pulls at Lando is any indication and so, so good. The nerves in Lando’s body sing out, this time in pleasure rather than nervousness or fear. Right here, right now, he thinks he could do anything.

He feels as invincible as he did before Vader, before Bespin even, like back when he took huge personal risks for great rewards and only had to hold himself accountable to himself and sometimes Lobot. He doesn’t miss those days—he likes who he is now after all—but it’s intoxicating to know that sensation could still exist and as a result of something so mild in comparison to cons and schemes and grand, elaborate lies.

They part for air and it takes everything in Lando’s power not to lean back in for more, but his chest is rising and falling steadily as his heartrate calms to a more normal rhythm.

Luke’s going to kill him if they keep this up.

“So,” he says, swallowing around the dryness in his throat. “You want to help me liberate Bespin?”

“Yeah, Lando. I do.”

“And you…” He taps the center of Luke’s chest, lets his palm linger, feels the thrum of Luke’s own beating heart beneath his fingertips.

“Yeah.” Luke rolls his eyes, good natured and amused. “That, too.”

“Well, now,” Lando says, pleased, almost cockily so even by his own accounting of it. “Isn’t that something?”

A flash of lightning caught Lando’s attention and had Luke turning his head. Smiling, interest clear in his eyes, Luke says, “Do you still want to turn in for the evening?”

Under certain circumstances, Lando would have liked to, but he can tell Luke’s still enamored of this planet’s strange weather. And Lando can go with that. Grabbing Luke’s hand, he pulled him back toward the window. “Nah.” He darts in for a kiss, pecking at the corner of Luke’s mouth, glorying in having that option now. “I don’t sleep well through storms anyway.”

Luke’s smile turns incandescent and he nods, peering back out onto the weather raging outside. Lando sees no sign of it abating.

Wrapping his arm around Luke’s shoulders, he finds that fact doesn’t bother him quite so much anymore.


End file.
